CPS Hold Meeting to Discuss Redesigned Foster Care System

CPS Hold Meeting to Discuss Redesigned Foster Care System

Child Protective Services in Texas held a information meeting in Wichita Falls to discuss the redesigned foster care system.

Three years ago, officials with Child Protective Services in Texas started looking into redesigning the foster care system.Changes are now in place and today, agencies that work with the foster care system attended a meeting to see how it's going.Mechell Dixon was there and brings us more.

Several dozen foster care providers, advocates and other stakeholders met to get a progress report on the state's redesigned foster care system.The meeting took place this afternoon at Regional 9.CPS officials say several years ago they realized the foster care system had problems.One example is that children, mostly in small communities, had to travel far distances to access necessary services that were not available where they were placed.So in 2010 plans for change began.CPS officials started getting input from the public and private agencies interested in child welfare and putting together goals with several desired outcomes.

"It includes first and foremost that they remain safe from abuse and neglect while they're in foster care. It includes opportunities that they be place with their siblings and that if for some reason they're not able to be placed with their siblings that they have on opportunity to have frequent communication with their sibling and their parents," says Cyndi Reed, foster care redesigned administrator.

The startup phase for the redesigned foster care system began last December and the live implementation started this past August.Although the new system started three months ago CPS officials say have noticed some favorable changes including child care placing agencies opening offices and recruiting foster homes where they have not been before and large sibling groups being placed together in homes instead of being separated.

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